Can the Voter Get his Groove Back?

Nobody should surrender this right ... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I checked the latest polls on realclearpolitics.com, and saw something a bit unusual. In hypothetical match-ups, Obama beats McCain by 3.8 points and Clinton beats McCain by 3.4 points. This is early in the campaign and the Democrats haven't even selected a final nominee. Both Obama and Clinton have distinct negatives (the baggage of Jeremiah Wright & Bill Clinton respectively). And yet both of them have a decent edge over McCain, who presumably has enjoyed the past three months as the sole GOP nominee.

Not unrelated to this polling trend is the tremendous increase of black Americans' participation in the 2008 election. It's almost as if in previous elections, they didn't feel they had a "dog in the fight". Blacks were putatively Democrats in 2000 / 2004, but their presence was tiny in comparison to the 2008 election. White evangelicals on the other hand were much attuned in the last two elections. They very likely sealed the deal for Bush. In this year's election, they're disappointed with McCain and have been much less vocal. They even seem to have rejected Mike Huckabee, a fellow evangelical but one with a non-Republican populist streak. What you have in all 3 elections (2000, 2004 and 2008) is electoral abdication by one of two major groups:

1. African Americans or
2. White evangelicals

Each group represents a significant percent of the voting populace. I'm not in either group myself, but must admonish that they do have a dog in the fight. By all appearances, Republicans are so deflated by the performance of "W" they've very nearly thrown in the towel. As Peggy Noonan pointed out in a recent Op-Ed, Republicans don't know how to distance themselves from the incumbent without seeming disloyal or in some way inappropriately liberal. But if they say and do nothing, they stand accused of offering a 3rd Bush term. It's a rock and a hard place if ever there were one. If African Americans had come forth in 2000 or 2004 as they have in 2008, would we be looking at 4,077 U.S. Iraq fatalities? Would we be looking at one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression? Now addressing evangelicals ... are you ready to sit on your hands showing contempt for McCain, knowing that Obama might select the next Supreme Court judges? What we have when whole groups abdicate is an extreme anomaly -- an elected president who steers way too far right or left and is unrepresentative of the nation at large. I think Bush has been somewhat a disaster and can't help thinking Obama, with his inexperience and his Chicago Southside cronies, would be a recipe for another disaster.

Interesting side note -- the California Supreme court just overturned a ruling against gay marriage yesterday. Pundits are saying it's unlikely to get overturned again by any constitutional amendment. A similar controversy erupted during the 2004 election, the striking down of the Texas Sodomy law. In 2004, that was impetus enough for evangelicals to come running out of the woodwork to save "traditional marriage". Karl Rove used it to great advantage for Team Bush. The Right is preoccupied this year and staring down problems much more worrisome than the "horrors" of gay marriage -- foreclosed housing, sky high gas prices and Middle East turmoil. In recent polls, significantly fewer people even identify themselves as Republican. There is much work needed for the GOP to get its groove back. Do I want snarky, anti-Gay evangelicals running the show? No I do not. Do I think we get freaking weird results when whole parts of the electorate sit out an election? Yes I do. I think 2008 will be to politics what El Nino was to weather patterns. When disaffected groups can "man up" and have dialogs with others, we may finally get representative government.

Maybe I'm wrong. Louis Farrakhan, leader of Nation of Islam, believes that whites and blacks are intrinsically unable to get along. He believes they should have separate leaders, separate governance. I hope for the sake of our diverse and dynamic "Great Melting Pot" that he's wrong. Everybody out there – please vote like it matters, because it does.

© 2008 blogSpotter